vineri, iunie 15, 2007 STRAWBERRY FARM SCANDAL IN BAVARIA: Illegal Romanian
Workers Paid Slave Wages by Policeman
Hunger, heat, and 13 hours back-breaking work a day: all for 1 an hour.
Customs officials raided a strawberry plantation in Bavaria on Thursday and
found illegal Romanian workers living in slave-like conditions. What was worse:
the owner of the farm is a policeman.Customs officers searched a Bavarian
strawberry plantation on Thursday and found Romanian illegal workers living in
squalid conditions.German custom authorities raided a strawberry plantation in
the village of Oberndorf in southern Germany at midnight Thursday night and
discovered up to 60 Romanian farm laborers living in miserable conditions. The
owner of the farm had been keeping the workers as virtual slaves and only
paying them around 1 ($1.33) an hour, for up to 13 hours of work a day in the
fields.The farm owner is reported to be a police officer, although he has been
on extended leave since 2003. Customs officers are now looking for the man, who
had already been fined for hiring illegal labor in
August 2006.In the current case he is under suspicion of "human trafficking
for the purpose of exploiting workers," a spokesperson for the Augsburg
Prosecutors Office told reporters on Friday.The 60 Romanian workers the
investigators found were housed in overheated containers, and around 50 other
Romanians are reported to have already left the farm.The containers are thought
to have been obtained from an asylum-seekers camp. Four workers were housed in
a tiny space of only nine square meters. Officials said there was no
functioning garbage system in the camp and not enough toilets. The men were not
provided with water or food, and money was withheld from their wages to pay for
their squalid accommodations.The officials were alerted by locals in the
village of Oberndorf, after the workers had gone begging for food in the area.
The customs office in Augsburg said that the strawberry pickers had been paid
an average wage of between 1 and 1.20 an hour, based on how many
strawberries they had picked.A spokesman for the customs office said: "You
have to imagine how it went. They were only sent onto the fields after the
Polish farm laborers had already started picking." That meant that the men had
only been able to pick a few strawberries, during their 13 hours of work a day.
SURSA: DER SPIEGEL
